'Aliens' Has All The Makings Of A Monster Hit

Food and medicine are poisoned by lunatics, the air and water by corporations and governments. And don't even think about the decaying ozone layer if you want to sleep tonight.

In a day when you needn't be paranoid to sense invisible dangers everywhere, a plague that you can see -- and kill -- may offer an opportunity for catharsis. That's just one reason the sequel to Alien, the horror hit of 1979, is such a satisfying fantasy. With luck, the new film's heroes can zap the menacing creatures that slither through ducts and hide under beds.

Aliens picks up the story of Warrant Officer Ripley, the lone survivor of an encounter between her spaceship and a lethal extraterrestrial. Since then, she's been drifting back to earth in a state of suspended animation. Upon awakening, Ripley learns that she's been in ''hypersleep'' for 57 years and that the company that launched her spaceship is still in business.

At first, company officials don't believe Ripley's story about the alien. Soon enough, though, they want her to act as an adviser on a voyage to a planet that may be infested with hundreds of the miserable creatures. Along on the trip are a group of space Marines, an artificial man called Bishop and a company man named Burke, who is, in his own way, even slimier than the aliens and more synthetic than Bishop.

The movie doesn't dwell on the fact that Ripley (van Winkle?) was asleep for nearly six decades, but the lacuna in her life puts just enough emotional distance between her and the other people on the screen to be intriguing. Actually, she may have less in common with her shipmates than she does with those in the audience who've also been through Alien. And even if you didn't catch the earlier film, the white terror in Ripley's gaze as she reflects on the past gives you a grim idea of what's in store.

If James Cameron, who wrote and directed this film, takes his time getting to most of the thrills, he puts that time to good use by developing the personalities of Ripley and the other characters and by establishing the relationships among them. The military men and women, for example, have an amusing camaraderie that excludes their commander, who doesn't quite know what he's doing. In fact, until Ripley gets to show her stuff, these junior- division Rambos don't think a lot of her, either.

Ripley (Sigourney Weaver) seems to like most of the Marines, though her approval of her shipmates does not extend to Burke (Paul Reiser), whom she treats with the casual contempt due a corporate apologist. (The way Burke automatically shrugs his shoulders as he speaks tells you he takes no personal responsibility for what he says.) As for the Spock-like Bishop (Lance Henriksen), Ripley likes him even less than she does Burke because an artificial man on her last flight caused a calamity. (Bishop denies any similarity to the inferior model the way you might dismiss kinship to a black- sheep relative.)

From James Cameron's previous work as the director/co-writer of The Terminator and the co-writer of Rambo, one could guess that he has a flair for explosive movie-making. But it was probably impossible to predict that he'd be as successful as he is in Aliens at providing emotional underpinnings for violence.

Perhaps Cameron got some help in this department from Walter Hill (director of 48 HRS. and The Warriors), who, in addition to being one of the movie's executive producers, helped work out the story. In any case, by the time the aliens begin their attack, you care enough about the human (and near human) characters to take their predicament seriously.

In this sense, Aliens is one of the most intensely shocking films to open in ages. Even if you think you've got the stamina for cinematic suspense, you may find yourself out in the lobby, midway, catching your breath. This film is also the best monster movie of the year and the best picture of any kind to open so far this summer. Put it another way: Aliens is the Jaws of the '80s.

In this sort of movie, it's the action scenes that you pay to see, and Aliens has enough of them for several movies. The first such sequence, a brief dream interlude, is almost a parody of the best scene in the original Alien. Ripley, writhing in bed, imagines an ugly creature breaking through her smooth, bare stomach. Perhaps the best scene in the new film is one that shows Ripley strapping herself into an elaborate mechanical device and going after the queen of the alien hive. For a few minutes, she's like a supercharged version of everyone who's ever tried to swat a huge palmetto bug with a rolled-up newspaper.

Aliens has a visual vigor: Its look is basically muscular, though the cinematography (by Adrian Biddle) allows for delicate shadings too. A lot is implied rather than shown directly, with shadows and rapid editing used to create an extreme state of anticipation in the viewer.